Brief Description of the Prior Art
Pyocyanine is a blue pigment that is formed by Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Although it has been known for a long time that pyocyanine is bactericidally active against gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria it has not hitherto been used in the therapeutic field. The reason for this lies in the cytotoxic effect on animal cells.
The in vitro cytotoxicity of pyocyanine was able ato be confirmed in work, preceding the invention, with human fibroblasts, human lymphocytes and mouse lymphocytes in culture. The work revealed that the cytotoxicity of pyocyanine is neither cell-specific nor species-specific. To be able to use pyocyanine as a therapeutic anti-cancer agent, the inventors set themselves the task of derivatising pyocyanine in order to bond it covalently to amino group-containing water-soluble or water-insoluble polymers or oligomers, for example cellulose, dextran, dextran derivatives (such as Sephadex) or proteins, such as tumour-specific proteins, for example monoclonal antibodies.